University of Twente Student Theses

The fundamentals of a co-creation campaign

More companies include co-creation campaigns in their marketing strategy. A co-creation campaign helps to create a strong relationship between the customer and the brand. The customer feels involved and the company gains important insights. Most brands create a campaign website to promote and facilitate the cocreation
activities. This study focusses on how a co-creation campaign website can be designed to get consumers motivated and having the intention to participate. The study contained a 2x2x2 (Full empowerment v.s select empowerment, financial reward vs. social reward, and complex product vs. simple product) between subjects experimental design. 232 respondents were showed 8 different conditions. These conditions differed in the level of empowerment having either full empowerment or select empowerment, 2 types of reward the participant would receive, either a financial reward or a social reward. The levels of empowerment and type of reward were moderated by product complexity, respondents were showed a simple product or a complex product. These variables were tested on the PAD scale (pleasure, arousal and dominance), intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and intention. The results showed that with a simple product the co-creators prefer full empowerment and with a complex product the co-creators prefer select empowerment. When not having enough knowledge about the product the co-creators seem to prefer a more straightforward task. Also the co-creators gain more pleasure out of a select empowerment task and feel more
in control when preforming the task. For companies that would like to initiate a co-creation campaign it is advised to first determine the complexity of the product and then adjust the level of empowerment to ensure high levels of motivations and the intention to participate.